Play The Diplomat’s Quiz: May 29, 2016 Edition

After years of canvassing and lobbying, Timor-Leste will be ready to become the 11th member of ASEAN by next year following extensive talks with Indonesia. If its admission is realized, it could potentially provide an economic boom for the tiny Southeast Asian backwater.

On May 23, the United States and Thailand kicked off a bilateral naval exercise in the Andaman Sea.

The U.S. Navy (USN) and the Royal Thai Navy (RTN) kicked off Exercise Guardian Sea, comprising bilateral naval training drills that aim to enhance cooperation in the fields of anti-submarine warfare and maritime domain awareness.

In Indonesia, the police arrested two activists for wearing a T-shirt that bears the image of “Partai Kopi Indonesia” (Indonesian Coffee Party or PKI). For the police, it resembles the acronym of the now-defunct Indonesian Communist Party (PKI). The police also arrested a store owner for selling a T-shirt that features a hammer and sickle communist symbol even if it’s the album cover of German metal band Kreator. Earlier this year, a literary festival was canceled by the police because the event aims to explore Leftist ideas.

In 1909, a chemist-turned-photography pioneer received the blessing of Russian Tsar Nicholas II to document the empire in color. Using a train car equipped with a darkroom (provided by the tsar) and two permits that granted him access to restricted areas, Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky, born in 1863, would go on to document Imperial Russia on the eve of great change. Within the decade, the tsar would be dead and Imperial Russia on its way to becoming the Soviet Union.

In a joint effort with Chinese search engine Baidu, tertiary education resource website sdaxue.com published “The Fifth Installment of Chinese University Network False Alerts University List,” revealing a list of fake diploma mills from across China. The website has been regularly publishing lists of fake schools since 2013. This year, an additional 73 organizations have been identified as fraudulent tertiary college education institutions in China, bringing the total number of fake colleges to 401.

Four days after the United States announced it had killed Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour, the leader of the Taliban, the group has announced a new leader.

Mawlawi Haibatullah Akhundzada, a former deputy to Mansour, has stepped up as the Taliban’s new leader, according to a statement released by the group.

“With heavy heart, but full belief in Allah’s will, the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan announces that the Commander of the Faithful Mullah Akhtar Mohammad Mansour was martyred in an American invading and evil forces’ drone strike on Saturday,” the Taliban noted in a statement.

Beginning in late-March, several states in India usualy face heat waves that work their way up to minor droughts in the extremely humid summer months of April, May, and June. This year, the situation has been much worse than usual. The desert state of Rajasthan in northwest India set a record temperature on May 19, when the city of Phalodi hit 51 degrees Celsius. In April, 19 out of the 33 districts in Rajasthan were reported to be facing severe drought.

Fifteen years after its first, and to date only, expansion–the inclusion of Uzbekistan–the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is set to welcome two new full members this summer and a third may be on the way. At the SCO summit, to be held in late June in Tashkent, India and Pakistan are expected to formally join as full-fledged members of the organization. Meanwhile, Iran looks to be next in line. At present, the group’s full members are China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, with Afghanistan, Belarus, Mongolia, Iran, Pakistan and India as present observers.

The United States, South Korea, and Japan will hold a joint exercise in Hawaii in June 2016, on the sidelines of the biennial Rim of the Pacific (RIMPAC) naval exercise; RIMPAC is the largest international maritime security exercise and will run from June 1 to August 1, 2016.

The trilateral U.S.-South Korea-Japan exercise will focus on anti-missile operations amid growing ballistic missile threats from North Korea, which has undertaken a flurry of tests since the beginning of this year to improve its missiles. The exercise will take place under the ambit of a December 2014 trilateral intelligence-sharing agreement, according to a South Korean defense ministry official who spoke to Yonhap News.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited Iran for two days, on May 22 and 23, where he met with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khameini, and other senior officials, signing a range of important agreements. The visit is Modi’s first to the country since the the implementation of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) between Iran and a group of world powers known as the P5+1—comprising the United States, China, Russia, Germany, the United Kingdom, and France—lifted international sanctions on Iran that were put in place over its nuclear program, opening up the country’s economy.